


Black and White

by Shachaai



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Fairy Tale, M/M, Swan Lake - Freeform, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-02-18
Updated: 2011-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-15 18:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shachaai/pseuds/Shachaai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twins. One - enchanted to be a bird whilst the sun shines, and only take on a human form at night. The other - enchanted to eventually destroy everything he touches, whether willingly or not. And both of them - oh, both of them - madly, sadly in love with the same man who, in choosing to save one, forever loses the other. A modern Swan Lake story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lexi_nyanko](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=lexi_nyanko).



> A slightly belated birthday gift for Lexi, who loves the story this is based on.

There was a woman, once, who lived sometime in the past or future in a world that nobody and everybody both knows and knew, once. A beautiful, powerful woman – a witch, if you will -, who hid herself away from the worlds but could be found by a few who had need of her, who, by luck or chance and most _certainly_ fate, had been taught how to find her. And there _were_ people who wanted to find her – a great many who had no need of her – but they could _not_ find her, though they searched and searched. She was not theirs to find.

This is not, however, her story or theirs, though they do play some part in it. And the witch is sorry, was sorry – so, so sorry – but this is and was the way things worked out to be.

In the cold, lonely north of the world the witch lived in a kingdom burned. It was a kingdom of mages and it was taken down by magic, destroyed from within by tricks and deceit. The buildings crumbled, the sky bled fire, and the populace lay dead in the streets. But, before that – oh, before _that_ –

Before that a dark man, a dark _mage_ , came at the head of his army, and gave the command to raze the kingdom to the ground. And he took with him his two most trusted followers and went to the palace, and they slaughtered with both magic and blade every man, woman and child within its walls save the twin child princes of the royal nursery and their nurse who the dark, dark three could not immediately find. The young princes and their keeper had already fled – but the dark bloody three found them, the two bright boys, their nurse and a small company of guards trying to escape the kingdom altogether via horseback.

The dark mage sent his army after the group. The guards split into two, going in either direction, with one prince with each smaller group. The boys cried out for each other but still their guardians kept riding – and one group was cornered by the mage’s army, and all of the guards within it were slain. The prince was dragged kicking and screaming before the man who had organised all the deaths that day, his pretty white clothes all matted with other people’s blood. He was handed into the care of the mage’s right-hand man – and then promptly handed into the care of the woman who flanked him after the little prince bit his first captor’s hand. The woman used her magic to put him to sleep, and then dropped the child to rest in the snow at their feet.

The mage’s army didn’t catch the group protecting the second prince. A few of its guards were captured, yes, and killed, but four of them remained, the last free royal of the fallen kingdom riding with them, hidden deep within the furs of one as they went across the icy wastes to safety.

They were too far away to kill without likely killing the prince with them – magic grew more imprecise with distance -, so the dark mage sent a spell after them of a different sort – a changing, changeling spell that saw five birds rise into the sky, dropping the furs that had once wrapped five humans behind them and leaving four confused horses meandering through the cold with no riders to guide them anymore.

Four beautiful swans and one swanling flew away that dark day, the adults carefully nudging the child with them, keeping the little bird in the air. The mage watched them go as his army continued to bring the kingdom around them to the ground, and when the birds were nothing but tiny dots in the sky took his leave of that cold place with his two companions, taking the sleeping prince with them.

In the cold, lonely north of the world the witch lived in a kingdom burned that day, and the witch – the beautiful, powerful witch – woke from her dreams of fire and ice with tears on her cheeks and her apologies echoing, always, in her empty, hidden home.


	2. The Swan and the Stranger

Youou Kurogane, the last of that name and one of the most infamous (tales of his exploits only _just_ exceeded the stories of his temper), had always had strange dreams. Always, ever since he could remember, he had dreamed of the wind through the reeds, downy soft feathers and blue waters reflecting the blue, blue sky overhead.

His younger cousin, Tomoyo Daidouji, a self-assured young woman who was far too keen for her own good and with a knowledge of _weird_ things Kurogane had never been able to fathom, said it came from having such a powerful miko for a mother – the women of the family always _had_ had a knack for the things outside the ordinary realms. (She would say that, of course; she _was_ one of those women. Her older sister, Kurogane was thankful to note, seemed to have passed over the weird gene – like Kurogane, Kendappa was of the more practical persuasion, even if she was a bit high-handed about it at times. It was best not to antagonise her too much though; aside from being a bit of a nag, Kendappa was the only person who Kurogane knew could beat you seven ways to Sunday and _then_ compose and play a song about it on the harp afterwards.)

Kurogane had scoffed at Tomoyo’s assertion. True, his deceased mother _had_ had a gift for the sight sometimes, short clear visions that had proven useful on more than one occasion – but Kurogane’s dreams were nothing like what his mother’s had been like at all. Kurogane’s dreams were pointless, abstract things, nothing but the wind, water and the sky until the shrill cry of the alarm clock woke him up each morning. Was his mother’s miko blood only meant to show him some backwater pond, nowhere and nothing?

 _“Perhaps,”_ Tomoyo had said, not looking at Kurogane but flicking through some clothing designs she’d drawn up for class, waiting for her cousin to finish pouring out their tea, _“you think you only dream of nothing because your something has yet to arrive?”_

Kurogane had snorted, and dumped the pot he’d been pouring from down on the table in front of them hard enough to make their cups rattle. _“It’s taking its sweet time getting here, then.”_

 _“It will get here,”_ Tomoyo had assured him, still not glancing up at him but reaching out to pick up her cup all the same, _“exactly when it is meant to.”_

Tomoyo was a frustrating person to live with. Hell, _all_ of the Daidoujis were frustrating to live with: Kurogane’s aunt, Sonomi, Kendappa, Tomoyo and all their staff. Kurogane’s parents had died before his thirteenth birthday and his aunt had taken him in, welcoming Youou into her large home (it was a freaking mansion) and immediate family. Kurogane was grateful to her, endlessly so – but there was a certain type of hell that could only be found by one man living with three women, all of whom being closely related to him. Make-up, bathroom invasions, giggling hordes swamping the living-room, skimpy lingerie left suspiciously dangling in places no innocent man ever wanted to find it. General female superiority that was impossible to argue against, Kurogane being outnumbered three to one.

If he hadn’t treasured them so dearly Kurogane would’ve killed them.

When he was twenty-three Kurogane’s dream finally changed. It was nothing deeply spectacular – in fact, he missed it at first, too used to dismissing the whole dream as a chore he’d never quite been able to shake. He dreamed, still, of the same sky, of feathers and the water, but the wind…on the wind, with the sounds of the rustling reeds, Kurogane dreamed of the sounds of calling birds, the harsh cries of a bevy of swans.

When he was twenty-four the sounds of the swans left him again, but the scenery of his dream changed, the waters of his vision no longer showing blue but black, night black, with the silver moon and the shining stars.

When he was twenty-five Kurogane saw ripples. And that summer –

That summer was irritatingly hot. Kurogane had recently started work at his aunt’s company as one of many technicians – he’d worked hard for the qualifications to get in, and shoved that in the face of anyone who passed comments about walking through on a family name -, and his days off were usually spent relaxing around the home estate near the air conditioning. There was, however, only so much relaxing one could do in one area without getting thoroughly sick of one’s surroundings and one day Kurogane drew the line and took himself out of the Daidouji home, bag slung over his shoulder, to look for somewhere else to waste his time off.

And that is how Kurogane found the canal.

He’d long known it was there, of course – God, who missed a stretch of water that long running through their city? – but had little cause to really venture near it. On sunny days, since it was so near the city centre, the nicer areas of the canal’s banks were plagued with happy-faced families feeding the ducks that quacked their way about, bored groups of teenagers slouching out on the grass and getting eyed by the righteous members of the community who felt they gave the area a bad name. A few feeble flowerbeds did their best to brighten up the scenery but the crisp packets floating out of the bins were more prolific, chewing gum on the paving stones that had been engrained by time and countless feet treading it in.

Kurogane spent the better part of the afternoon lounging on a clear area of grass reading, shoving his book in his bag only when evening came on and a chill crept into the air. He ate a late dinner in a café in the town and headed home just as late sunset was touching the sky, his path back to the estate taking him back near the canal, down where the streetlamps coming on just failed to reach.

It was quieter that late – the teenagers had taken themselves off to better places to welcome in the night and, aside from the occasional soul walking their dog, nobody else really had any business down that way. It was a deserted walk home, split into the sunset-drenched ground and the deep shadows cast by the bridges that went over the canal, shadowing the path and the water alike.

Kurogane paused in the shadow of one bridge to adjust the bag over his shoulder, shifting his load so that the edges of his book no longer dug into his spine. A light, pleasant wind was blowing, brushing over the canal’s surface and sending light ripples across its expanse, bending the leaves of the bushes over on the other bank slightly and drawing Kurogane’s attention that way with the movement.

There was a swan in the bushes.

Kurogane thought it was a carrier bag at first, some old rubbish that had been caught on a rock or a branch beneath the foliage, but then it moved _against_ the gentle breeze, glossy feathers just catching the last of the dying light, and Kurogane realised it was a bird. Why that should have mattered so much to him right then was something Kurogane would wonder for years to come – he wasn’t really thinking about it at the time, too preoccupied with the brief glimpses he had of the swan when the wind blew the bush’s branches back enough for him to see it, the white bird who, at that moment, was the only other living thing sharing the sunset world down by the canal with Kurogane.

The swan hadn’t even noticed it had company. It was busy grooming itself, beak picking through its feathers, unaware of the world beyond its bush. It probably had good reason to be so complacent; if it weren’t for the wind Kurogane wouldn’t have been able to see the bird at all, and even _with_ the breeze blowing he only got little snatches of sight, less and less as it quickly grew darker, the sun finally vanishing over the rim of the horizon.

The naked man obscured his vision of the bird entirely.

Kurogane didn’t know how the stranger had gotten there. He’d blinked – he’d _had_ to have blinked, even if he couldn’t remember doing so – and, suddenly, there was a slim figure rising from the middle of the bush, uncurling from a low crouch and stretching their muscles as if they’d been there for a while. (They couldn’t have been; they would have upset the swan.) God only knew what the idiot was doing in the bush – and why, Kurogane belatedly noticed just a few seconds later, they were doing whatever they were doing in the bush _with no clothes on._ Distant streetlights just picked out the gold of the stranger’s hair, the expanse of the stranger’s completely _bare_ skin, the long slope of a pale back and an exceedingly unclothed rear.

The world was strangely soundless; the water idling past was quiet, the wind had dropped, and there were no people nearby. The idiot in the bush seemed completely unaware they had company of any sort, still stretching, and Kurogane had no idea why the swan hadn’t _attacked_ the stranger or something, save the fact he couldn’t even see the swan anymore and he was getting off-track because there was a naked man(?) in the bush over there who was probably completely insane because, honestly, who chose to do their exercise in the middle of a bush at night without a stitch of clothing on them? Aside from the general public there was probably wildlife about being mentally scarred for their rest of their quacking lives.

“What,” Kurogane very sensibly asked, loud and clear and carrying straight across the canal to the godforsaken idiot on the other side, “the fuck are you doing?”

The stranger jumped about a mile high at the sound of Kurogane’s voice and instinctively whirled about and – _yes,_ it was definitely a man in the bush, unless there had been a new stage of evolution recently introduced for women the male population at large had failed to be informed about.

Kurogane quickly averted his eyes someplace past the insane man’s shoulder – same type of equipment or not, he wasn’t particularly interested in being caught checking out another random model -, but even then he still caught how the stranger _flushed,_ pink spreading straight down the man’s pale chest, realising what a view he’d offered and trying to discreetly shuffle behind a large clump of leaves.

So he wasn’t _completely_ shameless and/or insane, then.

He was, however, very, very red. “I can explain.”

“…Right,” Kurogane said, and thoughtfully decided not to move from his spot in case he got an eyeful of what the crazy naked stranger was trying so vainly to hide. His book was pressing uncomfortably into his side again. Then, because, really, the stranger’s response had brought up a whole host of hidden implications - “You do this sort of thing often?”


End file.
